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Veal Forcemeat

A veal forcemeat mixture used for making meatballs or stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the veal finely and place it in a mortar.

  2. Add the suet or butter and the soaked bread crumbs.

  3. Pound the mixture well, adding nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs to bind the mixture.

Shape and cook

  1. Form into balls and fry, or use as stuffing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the meatballs.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and tender as they cook.
Stale bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and lighten the texture so the mixture stays tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so the meatballs hold their shape.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture well. Thorough pounding breaks down the meat and evenly distributes the fat and crumbs, so the mixture binds smoothly and the meatballs cook up tender rather than crumbly or dense.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, bread, milk, pepper, egg):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, milk, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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